Faith Guided Mel Gibson Through 'Passion'

Published 8:00 pm, Saturday, June 28, 2003

Mel Gibson says he attended Mass every morning while shooting his new movie, "The Passion," because "we had to be squeaky clean just working on this."

The film, which Gibson directs, stars James Caviezel as Christ during the last 12 hours of his life and Monica Bellucci as Mary Magdalene. The $25 million production was shot in the Aramaic language of the time, but there were subtitles for Thursday's showing.

Gibson said his Christian faith inspired the film. He is still looking for a distributor.

"I'm not a preacher, and I'm not a pastor," the 47-year-old director-actor said. "But I really feel my career was leading me to make this. The Holy Ghost was working through me on this film, and I was just directing traffic. I hope the film has the power to evangelize."

Gibson said the film "was a strange mixture of the most difficult thing I've ever done, along with this incredible ease. Everyone who worked on this movie was changed. There were agnostics and Muslims on set converting to Christianity."